Martin fired: Gauthier next?

Jacques Martin is the latest head coach to get the boot as he was fired Saturday morning just before the Canadiens took the ice to practice this morning announcing that assistant coach Randy Cunneyworth will be taking over for the remainder of the season one of the few to coach the team without having a french speaking background.

The Habs are 13-12-7 coming off a loss Thursday to the injury depleted Philadelphia Flyers without their 2 best players Giroux and Pronger and a team that has been just above the .500 mark this season and the writing was probably on the wall earlier this year when Gauthier fired Martin's good friend assistant coach Perry Pearn before a game on Oct 26th and while this might be another attempt to help Pierre Gauthier keep his job and cover up the mistakes the Habs have made the past few seasons some of them his doing

Like trading Matt D'Agostini who has turned into a more productive player in St. Louis for Aaron Palushaj, trading Jaroslav Halak after the amazing playoff performance he had carrying Montreal to the Eastern conference final in 2010 for Lars Eller who has done little but not a lot and Ian Schultz who is still in the AHL. Halak hasn't been able to replicate what he did in Montreal but it was terrible trade at the time and it still is. He signed Andre Markov for the same amount of money $5.25 million in his previous contract and played 7 games last year and hasn't played since November 13th last year with ongoing knee problems and isn't returning anytime soon.

The Eric Cole contract (4 years $18 million with a no-trade clause) is looking sketchy with his streaky play and outside of Carolina he has never looked right elsewhere when he played briefly in an unmemorable stint in Edmonton and traded Jarolav Spacek with an expiring contract to Carolina for Tomas Kaberle who didn't play great for Boston in the playoffs and was terrible fro Carolina in the beginning of the season and while Scott Gomez trade was Bob Gainey's disaster move, Pierre Gauthier was the assistant GM during this.

The point is this the way this team is constructed is this team is mostly Carey Price and not much else they do have some talented players Brian Gionta,Michael Cammalieri, P.K. Subban and Josh Georges and Tomas Plecanek, Max Pacioretty and David Desharnais(the reason they should bury Gomez's contract in the AHL) are young emerging talent but this team continues to rely on their Carey Price on a nightly basis and his year compared to last year is a down year, althought he has been better since the season started.

Montreal at the moment has just over $43 million($38 million of it to 7 players) committed to 12 players for 2012-13 season wihich leaves them about $19 million to spend on main RFA Carey Price, P.K Subban, Lars Eller, UFA's Mathieu Darche, Andre Kositsyn, Josh Georges. This team still needs at least another top 6 forward and another top 4 defensman which gets difficult when you have this many bad contracts tied up long term.

Should the Montreal Canadiens end up missing the playoffs this season it might be Pierre Gauthier who ends up paying the price next

Agree or disagree comment below or you can follow me on twitter @DArm91

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